It's always intriguing to hear Tom Ford rationalize his work. Unfortunately, he was laid low by a bug at tonight's show, so his powers of speech were curtailed. Which meant that it was left to the voice of the polarized hoi polloi to muse over what they'd seen. And polarized they most definitely were. The soundtrack was a narcotized female version of "Addicted to Love" (the vocalist's emphasis on the addiction, rather than the love), to which extraordinarily proportioned girls—rail thin, seven feet tall in their platform clogs—teetered down the mirrored catwalk, eyes laden with mascara, hair in teased-out shags. Backstage there was a mention of Debbie Harry, but with the height, the skinniness, and the makeup, it was more Tommy Lee or Nikki Sixx who came to mind. The girls sported second-skin pantsuits with high-waisted, superwide flares, and skirts so short that stockings ended below the hemline. Toward the end there were hip-slung floor-scrapers with only a thin strip of fabric to cover the breasts. There were pasties, too. Proper pasties. What was Tom Ford saying about—or to—women with a show like this? Some saw a brazen, empowered sex bomb, timer set to blow men to smithereens. Others saw the exact opposite: a powerless vassal, subject to the whims of the man with the titanium Amex. (Note that the other half of the equation is always a man.)